Archive | Originally published 2021-02-16. Ages, crowdfunding progress and current affairs are retained as reported at the time. Please refer to the product pages for current availability and licensing.
The name Moodmen may be unfamiliar, but a visit to its Instagram page reveals carefully drawn Traditional Chinese lettering paired with scenes of everyday life. Behind it is Roy Chan, who trained in advertising rather than type design. Working in design studios, he found the range of Chinese display fonts limited and sometimes turned to Japanese fonts, only to encounter missing characters. While changing jobs in 2019, he began sharing specially drawn words and phrases online. The response eventually led him to devote himself to making letters full-time.
Moodmen Font applied its lettering to products including lyric-covered phone cases, bottle openers in four colours and Traditional Chinese-character paper clips. Particularly important was a calendar series about Hong Kong. ‘The calendar was my first substantial project. I chose Hong Kong because I believe design should improve life. Like many people here, I lived in a pressured, fast-moving city where you are expected always to work hard. But why must it be like that? I wanted a project that felt like talking to a friend, saying that I understood both the good and the difficult parts of living here.’
Turning uncertainty at work into a design starting point
His first calendar, for 2020, was titled 生於香港的無奈, about the frustrations of being born in Hong Kong. Each month carried a line of copy. March read, ‘Hong Kong makes me frantically do what everyone considers normal,’ drawn from his experience of repeatedly changing jobs to seek higher pay and promotion. ‘I reached a point where I frightened myself. What was I changing jobs for? I put pressure on myself to reach the highest position in the shortest time.’ Looking back, he felt he had mistaken a narrow model of success for the only possible path. He chose to slow down, return to creating and make work people might remember.
The following calendar, 守在離岸的香港, considered Hong Kong from the position of departure. The article connected its theme with the growing public discussion of emigration after 2019. Roy paired six lines about Hong Kong with six about a place people imagined moving to, expressing the conflict between leaving and remaining attached. January’s ‘There are still too many farewells I do not want to make here’ was answered by February’s ‘There, space is what fills a home.’ Some readers had found the previous calendar too negative; this time he tried a different way of presenting the same difficult feelings.
Gentle lines in the phrase about reluctant farewells suggested an attachment that would not quite break. For the phrase about filling a home, he placed the lettering inside a square, evoking the constraints of housing while keeping the composition light. The forms were drawn to serve each line’s theme. ‘We are not simply selling fonts or phone cases. We want to show the possibilities of Traditional Chinese, and how a single character can carry a story.’ Changes to strokes, style and direction can give a short phrase a very different emotional tone.
What sustains an interest in work made from apparently repetitive black strokes? Roy laughed: ‘The process is just black on white; the spaces create the grey. But the questions of how thick a stroke should be, or how much space to leave, can become addictive. It is the relationship between positive and negative space.’ The calendar also extended beyond lettering: the uneven top edges of its twelve cards joined to form the profile of Lion Rock.
Why Lion Rock, when younger generations often associate its spirit with their elders? Roy had considered Victoria Harbour and other mountain profiles, but felt Lion Rock still expressed something relevant. ‘Even when we say we reject it, we remain part of that spirit. The way people have worked together in recent years is another version of it.’ Like a line on a calendar that acquires a different meaning after a month has passed, the complete mountain emerged through time, experience and the gradual assembly of the cards.
Do not look only at the limits in front of you
After the events of 2019 and the pandemic in 2020, Roy felt a positive outlook mattered despite a strong sense of powerlessness. ‘Some words can no longer be said, but we should not magnify only the restrictions. There are still many things we can do, even with one character.’ The calendar unexpectedly resonated with customers preparing to leave Hong Kong, some of whom asked to receive it early. Yet he chose the idea of keeping watch. His December lines suggested that Hong Kong could remain present both here and elsewhere, giving him a reason to continue making words for its people.
Editor: 王翠麗 | Text: 尹青
